Sofia's Last Ambulance

May 25, 2012|Jay Weissberg | Variety

Faces convey all that auds need to know in tyro helmer Ilian Metev's rigidly constructed and deeply human docu "Sofia's Last Ambulance." The title refers not to a woman but to Bulgaria's capital, down to a mere thirteen ambulances thanks to rampant corruption and severe underfunding. Metev's approach is cinematic rather than didactical, keeping his always respectful camera tightly held on three subjects whose commitment and exhaustion register in equal amounts. Enthusiastic attention from fests won't hemorrhage away anytime soon.

Metev followed a couple of medics and their driver for two years, apparently fixing the camera to the dashboard to study the three in various stages of relaxation, tension, relief and concern. Scenes in the back of the ambulance, and on-call throughout the city, remain focused on the trio rather than their cases, maintaining patients' privacy and avoiding the sensational or gruesome.

Work conditions are gruesome enough considering the scandalous number of ambulances serving a city of approximately two million. In addition, dispatchers are few and overworked, plus roads are so riddled with potholes that anyone inside the ambulance exits with their kishkas in knots. Though the three workers here are visibly on the brink of burn-out, somehow their humanity keeps them going forward.

Riding shotgun in the middle is medic Mila Mikhailova, the most outgoing of the group, naturally peppering her gurney-side manner with "honeys" and "my dears." Stone-faced Doctor Krassimir Yordanov has the window seat, and Plamen Slavkov is at the wheel. Metev offers no personal details, and only the minimum of their lives outside the ambulance is revealed in conversation: the docu's focus is as fixed as the helmer's passively observational camera.

What comes through is the trio's heroic soldiering on in the face of a practically non-existent infrastructure (this is the non-fiction version of Luminita Gheorghiu and Gabriel Spahiu in "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu"). Poor communication, inaccurate directions from dispatchers, horrendous road conditions, and obstreperous patients are only some of the problems they face daily, on top of the knowledge that they'll never be able to properly attend to a large portion of the emergency cases.

Metev has the kind of appreciation for faces seen in the photos of Edward S. Curtis, and it's fascinating to scrutinize creases, expressions and eyes which gaze ahead with silent exasperation. Though there's no sense of chronology, editing follows a subtle progression from hopeful to enervated, leaving viewers wondering how much longer these three can keep doing their work before cracking up.